Tony L
Administrator
I'm glad I started an interesting debate, I think that people with high sensitivity to pitch - which may be not the same thing as perfect pitch - are more numerous than is commonly thought. We are trained to judge audio gear by basically a mix of frequency response and phase relationships, but in the case of turntables rotation of the platter is the very thing that creates sound, so perfect rotation is essential to perfect tune.
Agree entirely. I’ve got good relative pitch, e.g. I can play in key by ear etc, though not ‘perfect pitch’ which is the ability to identify notes by name on hearing and to know if they are slightly flat/sharp vs. an A440 tuning reference they keep in their head. Most people should be able to to identify or at least feel uncomfortable by the sort of wow a turntable can produce with an eccentric pressing, dynamic wow etc, and I suspect the more they are worried by it the more likely they ultimately end up with idler or DD decks, crazy high-mass behemoths etc, or just abandon the whole thing for digital.
My own story is interesting in that I knew damn well I’d lost something swapping my 1st system Lenco L75 for a series of belt drive decks, even though I obviously gained a lot in other areas. I didn’t have the language or knowledge to articulate it at that point, but I knew the Lenco did something the Ariston RD80 just didn’t. There was a rightness that had been replaced with an admittedly far cleaner vagueness. The Xerxes (when it worked) moved forwards from that, but to be honest it wasn’t until this century that I plonked a totally stock Lenco L70 on the floor in front of my Spacedeck that it all came flooding back. The Lenco was hopelessly crude (agricultural tonearm, basic Pickering V15 MM), but it played in tune and in time in an absolutely rock-solid way, and with real enthusiasm and life. I’ve owned a Garrard 301 and my current TD-124 since, and I can’t seem my changing the latter now for anything this side of an EMT 930. I suspect there are direct drive decks out there I’d love too, but I didn’t get on with the SL1200G (just too ‘dead’ to my ears, but I think that is a high mass thing, not a drive thing).